Adirondack Post-storm Bird Rite
·
I sat on my porch last evening and enjoyed
another magnificent summer thunderstorm.
After the rain subsided, a flock of at least 30 cute little birds
swooped into the hedges that border my yard.
That cute little chorus line of birds simultaneously commenced on pooping
their respective body weights, as though they’d rehearsed. Must be some sort of post- storm bird ritual. While I was impressed by their lockstep precision and at the relative volume
of poop they pooped, a part of me was a bit disgusted with the demonstration,
on the whole.
Olympic Medal Taxes
·
There’s hub-bub about Olympians paying tax on
the money connected with medals they win.
I don’t know when the rules changed, but I remember when I was a kid we
used to hear about Olympians being stripped of medals because they’d lost their
“amateur” status by endorsing a product or service. Now professional basketball players compete
in the Olympics, and there is money associated with winning medals even for “amateur”
athletes. I hate taxes like everyone
does, and understand the arguments about how hard the Olympians work to get to
that level of performance, but I’m not sure why taxes would be exempt for money
they earn.
Red Planet Landing
·
NASA is celebrating the Rover “Curiosity”
landing on Mars. The animation they
showed on TV looked real enough for me that NASA should have saved the bucks ($2.5
billion) on the actual mission. If the
mission is successful, the Rover will find water, which is apparently very hard
to come by on Mars.
Syria
·
Over the weekend, the Syrian Prime Minister
defected (to the opposition forces) with his family to Jordan. I’m not a Middle East scholar by any stretch,
but that probably is not a good sign about stability for that nation and the
region, right?
Oak Creek, WI Shooting
·
Another tragic and senseless shooting, this time
in a church during a Sunday service. The
strong DOJ (Federal and State’s Attorneys and local Mayor and Police Chief) focus (emphasized in their remarks)
on the religious/cultural community that was impacted seems forced and
exclusionary, when I assume that the intent was the opposite.
I believe that the intent of the comments was and is to honor
and express compassion for a culture and group of people who were victims of
this crime. Clearly that church’s
congregation has endured a horror I can’t even imagine, but their loss is human
loss, and I’m sure belongs to all the citizens of that town. It may be determined that this massacre was
hate-motivated, but by referring to the folks of that congregation as “the Sikh
Community” and “they”, the message seems to be that “they” are not “we”.
It’s also interesting that as this
story is reported there is little known so far about the shooter, but there is
repeated mention of his time in the US military, which ended with a general
discharge in 1998. Is the US
Soldier-Shooter connection in this specific case really so strong that his military
service which ended 14 years ago is pertinent?
The Word’s Out
·
“The word’s out” that Harry Reid……. <your anonymously-reported
accusation here>. This is classic partisan
political baiting, but it’s outrageous that Reid chose to do it from the senate
podium, giving credit for the “word” to some anonymous but “credible source”.
I sort of wish that Mitt would show his
decade’s worth of tax returns, just to get this behind him, although he is not
bound by law to do so. It'd prove that he's a rich and successful guy. No doubt his
accountants have served him well with shelters, but I’m guessing that there was
no illegal “tax evasion” involved. Or Romney
could have simply denied Reid’s allegations and left it at that, or perhaps
commented on the arguable impropriety of Reid using the senate floor as a platform
for his political attack.
It was a mistake for Romney to answer
Reid’s charges by saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if Reid’s “credible
source” was the White House. By
responding in that manner, Romney lowered himself to Reid’s level.
No comments:
Post a Comment